text:
Mike Odendaal / Denel Dynamics
A Seeker 400 drone, manufactured by South African company Denel Dynamics, flies over Cape Town Stadium.
Editor's note: A clarification has been made to this article.
On a sprawling complex just outside Pretoria, South Africa, a government-owned arms manufacturer is preparing to test an armed drone that it hopes to begin selling soon to governments around the world.
The company, Denel Dynamics, says the armed version of the Seeker 400, which will carry two laser-guided missiles, will enable so-called opportunistic targeting at a range of up to about 155 miles.
"These are not combat systems, they are foremost reconnaissance systems," Sello Ntsihlele, executive manager of UAV systems for Denel, told NBC News. He added: "(But if) you speak to any general, show him the capability, he will tell you, 'I want to have munitions.'"
The company's move is but one signal that the era when only a small club of countries possessed weaponized drones is drawing to a close.
Critics say the coming proliferation of the lethal remote-controlled flying machines will forever change the face of counterterrorism operations and, eventually, warfare itself – and not for the better.
"The U.S. has set a moral precedent," said Jenifer Gibson of the human rights group Reprieve. "A state can declare someone a terrorist and just go out and kill them."
Reprieve campaigns against what it calls illegal drone strikes.
Supporters of military drones argue that they are an essential tool against terrorists hiding in remote areas and that their ability to strike with precision minimizes civilian casualties. Reprieve rejects the notion that drones are precision weapons and claims many civilians have been killed.
Who has drones — and who wants them
Only three countries are known to currently operate armed unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, as drones are technically known -- the U.S., the U.K. and Israel -- according to a recent report by the think tank RUSI. The report suggested there are only currently around 1,000 armed drones worldwide.
NBC's Keir Simmons reports on the United States' reluctance to share its drone strategy with other countries in the world.
But China also is believed to have developed weaponized drones; the U.S. has said it would arm drones operated by Italy; and France and Germany also have decided to acquire them, according to arms trade experts and published reports.
And according to Peter Singer, director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institute, at least 26 countries have surveillance drones of a size or type that have been or could be armed, and roughly 20 countries are trying to either develop or acquire weaponized drones.
So far, the United States is the only country known to have transferred armed drone technology -- and solely to Britain, which flies U.S.-built Predators in Afghanistan.
U.S. sales of drones, armed and unarmed, "are considered on a case-by-case basis, consistent with U.S. law, regulation and policy, as well as our international commitments, including under the multilateral nonproliferation regimes," a Pentagon spokesman said in an email to NBC News. A State Department spokesman declined to comment on the record.
U.S. reluctance to share its cutting-edge military drone technology outside a few trusted NATO partners like Britain and Italy is viewed as an opportunity by arms manufacturers like Denel Dynamics.
The company aims to be among the first suppliers of armed drones to market, if tests of the armed versions of the Seeker 400 -- expected to begin in "a month or two" and last up to six months, according to Ntsihlele -- are successful. South Africa would have to purchase the armed drones first before the company would begin marketing them elsewhere, but if that happens Denel sees opportunities for growth elsewhere, particularly in "Africa and the Middle East," he said.
Ntsihlele declined to say how much the armed Seeker 400 will cost, but said it will be far cheaper than the Predator and Reaper, the armed drones used for anti-terrorism operations by the U.S. military in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen, which cost approximately $20 million and $56.5 million apiece, respectively. And unlike those UAVs, it would not require satellite technology, being controlled instead through "line of sight" communications. That limits its range but makes it potentially available to nations without sophisticated space-based guidance systems.
The drone market
President Barack Obama, in a speech last Thursday, said he would impose new limits on drone strikes against foreign terrorists in an attempt to reduce civilian casualties to near zero and ensure that only enemies who pose a "continuing, imminent threat" to the United States are targeted.
"What we are trying to do with our (anti-terror) strategy is turn it back over to the host country and local forces," the New York Times quoted the Pentagon's top counterterrorism official Michael Sheehan as saying. "That is the future."
The sale of armed drones to other governments raises similarly thorny issues though.
Staff Sgt. Brian Ferguson/U.S. Air Force
The military use of armed drones in the Middle East and Afghanistan has brought more countries and companies into the market for such weapons. Here are some of the un-crewed aerial vehicles that are known to carry weapons or that might be adapted to carry them.
There are no international treaties restricting sales of armed drones, only voluntary controls on exports. Beyond sanctions and embargoes governed by the Security Council, the United Nations does not regulate arms and arms-technology sales, although the Arms Trade Treaty approved in April by the General Assembly may change that if it is eventually ratified by enough nations.
In Denel's case, Ntsihlele indicated that the South African government would limit sales only to governments that would be "accountable and responsible" and agree to "opportunistic" use of the weapons on justified targets. "That target could be a pirate, or could be a terrorist," he said.
The company also provided this statement to NBC News: "All of our activities ... take place within the framework of decisions taken by international organs such as the United Nations, the policies of the South African government and the regulatory prescripts imposed by the National Conventional Arms Control Committee and the Directorate Conventional Arms Control," referring to two South African government organizations.
Assuming it gets its product to market, Denel is expected to quickly encounter plenty of competition.
"To the extent that the U.S. backs off the armed drone business, it allows countries like China, in particular, to say they'll fill the marketplace," said Dennis Gormley, who teaches intelligence and military issues at the University of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.
China already has shown an armed drone resembling a smaller Reaper at an air show last fall, and photos surfaced on Chinese websites earlier this month showing what appeared to be an unmanned combat aerial vehicle known as the Lijan, or "Sharp Sword." The Lijan closely resembles the U.S. Navy's remote-controlled X-47B drone, which recently launched from an aircraft carrier for the first time.
Israel will also be a marketplace competitor. It is a leader in armed drones and is already considered the biggest exporter of unarmed drone technology.
Turkey also has developed a reconnaissance drone, the Anka, for spying on Kurdish insurgents. Last summer, the Turkish Defense Industry Executive Committee said that TAI, the company that builds the Anka, was starting research and development on an armed variant, the Anka +A.
Turkey had been intensely interested in buying armed drones from the U.S., said William Hartung, director of the arms and security project at the Center for International Policy. So far, the U.S. has resisted selling it such technology, despite its NATO membership, he said.
Iran also has made unsubstantiated claims to have armed drones.
Terrorism concerns
The spread of armed drone technology to volatile regions like the Middle East inevitably stirs concern that terrorists could obtain the airborne weapons. So far, the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah, considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., is the only group believed to possess the UAVS. It has flown several unarmed drones containing explosives over Israel and, in one case, apparently used an armed drone to attack an Israeli ship, according to published reports.
Khaled Abdullah / Reuters file
Yemeni tribesmen stand on the rubble of a building in the village of Azan that was destroyed by a U.S. drone air strike on Oct. 14, 2011. Tribal elders say that suspected al Qaeda militants Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the son of slain U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, and six others were killed in the attack.
The possibility of using small drones as attack platforms was driven home by a video posted on YouTube in December by an anonymous group called Dangerous Information. It showed a small electric-powered drone equipped with a GoPro video camera and paintball gun, first flying through a neighborhood, then attacking human-figure targets in a field.
The development of smaller drones has been accompanied by new smaller munitions that don't require the Predator's 450-pound payload capacity. Denel's Seeker 400, for example, will have a payload half that, according to a company brochure, but still be capable of carrying two laser-guided missiles.
"There is the development of smaller and smaller weapons, some of them specifically for UAVs," said Philip Finnegan, director of corporate analysis for the Teal Group, which conducts market analysis in the aerospace and defense industry. "So they'll be able to use smaller platforms."
While armed drones appear certain to be added to more countries' arsenals in the near future, analysts say they expect the military sector will remain a relatively small piece of the overall drone market for some time to come. A big reason for that is the restrained growth in defense budgets worldwide and cuts by the U.S. military in spending on drones, which also affect research and development.
"There is short-term pressure on the industry. … It's a combination of budgetary pressure and the withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan," Finnegan said. "Longer term, the U.S. remains heavily committed to advanced UAV technology."
And sales to smaller nations are likely to be slow due to the fact that even with prices falling, armed drones remain prohibitively expensive, Denel's Ntsihele said, recounting conversations with prospective buyers.
"When they get to know the product, they get shocked," he said.
Keir Simmons is a correspondent in NBC News' London bureau; Gil Aegerter is an NBC News staff writer in Redmond, Wash.; NBC News' Marc Smith and Robert Windrem also contributed reporting to this article.
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text:
After the Fire
The Past
The Sioux Center Public library was destroyed by arson on July 23, 2003. All of our shelving was destroyed. We lost our entire paperback book collection, 28% of our hard cover collection, 92% of the video collection, 37% of the DVD collection, 83% of our book-on-tape collection, 98% of our puppet collection, and all of our magazine collection. The materials lost totaled $600,000.
After our building was destroyed, all salvageable materials were taken to be cleaned. When they returned, they were inventoried, marked with a tribute to our daring fire department, and cleaned again by volunteers. We currently are using shelving loaned to us by various libraries around our area.
After the fire, the library moved into the gymnasium of the old Community Center, with make-shift office space among the shelves on the gym floor. We received an outstanding amount of support from our community of 6,000 and from various libraries throughout the state, in the form of donated books, monetary gifts, and time volunteered.
Construction began on the new facility in the summer of 2007. The new building began taking shape on the section of land just north of the Community Center Gym. In August and September of 2008, our thousands of books were moved from one building to the other, and the library began operations in a beautiful new facility.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
By JEFF PICKELL
"Oh crud," I said.
This was two Saturdays ago. I knew that sound. That's the sound your car makes when it doesn't want to start. That's the sound my car was making. I hate car trouble.
I got lucky this time. A customer at Gamble's was kind enough to offer me a jump, but I ended up sinking 70 bones into a new car battery that I couldn't figure out how to install. That's the thing with cars these days—everything is so jammed in there that you can't get anything done without a lift and thousands of dollars worth of specialized tools. The stay-at-home mechanic has essentially gone the way of the dodo.
Cars used to be fixable. I should know because I spent most of high school fixing them. Well, I should say, I spent most of high school fixing one—the one I couldn't stop crashing.
It was an all white 1992 Chevy S-10 with a manual transmission, an all in all pretty nice little truck for a high school kid to zip around in. Since I had the model with the small V6, there was also the added bonus of being able to pull completely awesome fishtails on dirt roads.
I remember clearly the day of the first crash. I had just picked up my brother Jamie from school. After exiting the parking lot with a totally sweet tire-squealing burnout that I'm sure impressed the middle school girls, I accelerated toward a red light because it is the mantra of all young and stupid drivers to go as fast as possible and brake at the last second.
With an expressionless tough guy look on my face and rap music playing at full blast, I flipped some kid off as I drove past him.
Scholars call this hubris.
Not a half hour later the truck was nuzzled into a tree in front of the house and my mom was yelling at me so hard that I ran away. Literally. I took off on foot and never looked back, and 25 minutes later she chased me down to continue reaming me out in front of all the traffic on Hickory Ridge Road.
That crash was child's play. All I did was slide into a tree in front of our house.
My brother John (70 percent), my dad (29.8 percent) and I (0.2 percent) had the car looking new within a week. We just had to replace the hood, right fender, grill and front clip. It was absolutely no fun.
Working under the truck was the worst, with all the little bits of grease and dirt and dead animal that I ran over dripping into my eyes and mouth. And all the cuts you get from reaching through tears in sheet metal to get at a bolt—they looked cool later, in scar form, but they didn't make the work more enjoyable.
The next crash was the worst. It happened the next summer.
I was following my friend KJ back to my house when we came to a yellow light at an intersection. Everybody knows yellow means "gun it and blow through the light two seconds after it's turned red," but I guess KJ forgot that day. I rear-ended him and completely wrecked his Lumina. Right in front of the main entrance to Kensington Metro Park. Right in front of a crowded Dairy Queen. On a sunny summer Saturday.
When school began, several classmates reported how they saw me crying diligently, waiting for my mom to arrive.
I have the ill luck of having a mom with an accounting business. One of her clients, Bob Stevenson, owned a junkyard and was the nicest person in the world. While the crash had completely mangled the front end of the S-10, my dad determined it was fixable. Bob donated all kinds of parts and I donated $1,000 to KJ and the rest of my summer to creating what would become the red, white and gray GMC Chevy S-10 Blazer Jimmy 4x4. As you can see, we collected junk fenders and other parts from an assortment of vehicles.
My car was the laughingstock of the school parking lot, especially when I crashed it there a few weeks after school started. I pulled a U-turn right smack dab into an Expedition, busting the hood and both the fenders again and again crying until my mom showed up.
By then I knew the car inside and out, and I decided to fix things right. I emptied my bank account again and bought new parts and invested in a cheap paint job at Maaco, and except for a weekend-long adventure with Bondo and a spell where the distributor went on the fritz, I was done working at that car for good.
Now I drive, as my friend Dolley termed it, like "five old ladies all rolled into one."- Jan. 10, 2007


text:
[Federal Register: March 14, 2008 (Volume 73, Number 51)]
[Page 13867-13870]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
Proposed Exemptive Order for ST Gold Futures Contracts
AGENCY: Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
ACTION: Notice of proposed order and request for comment.
SUMMARY: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (Commission) is
proposing to exempt certain transactions in physically delivered
futures contracts based on streetTRACKS[reg] Gold Trust Shares (ST gold
futures contracts) \1\ from those provisions of the Commodity Exchange
Act (CEA or Act),\2\ and the Commission's regulations thereunder, that
are inconsistent with the trading and clearing of ST gold futures
contracts as security futures. The proposed exemption would be
conditioned on the compliance of transactions in ST gold futures
contracts with the requirements established for security futures. The
authority for the issuance of this exemption is found in Section 4(c)
of the Act.\3\
\1\ streetTRACKS[reg] is a registered service mark of State
Street Corporation, an affiliate of State Street Global Markets,
LLC, the marketing agent for the streetTRACKS[reg] Gold Trust.
\2\ 7 U.S.C. 1 et seq.
\3\ 7 U.S.C. 6(c).
DATES: Comments must be received on or before March 31, 2008.
ADDRESSES: Comments should be sent to the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission, Three Lafayette Centre, 1155 21st Street, NW., Washington,
DC 20581, attention: Office of the Secretariat. Comments may be sent by
facsimile to 202.418.5521, or by e-mail to [email protected]
Reference should be made to the ``Proposed Exemptive Order for ST Gold
Futures Contracts.'' Comments may also be submitted through the Federal
eRulemaking Portal at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leavingFR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.regulations.gov. All comments received
will be posted without change to http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leavingFR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.CFTC.gov.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Bruce Fekrat, Special Counsel, Office
of the Director (telephone 202.418.5578, e-mail [email protected]),
Division of Market Oversight, Commodity Futures Trading Commission,
Three Lafayette Centre, 1155 21st Street, NW., Washington, DC 20581.
I. Introduction
In correspondence dated October 26, 2007, OneChicago, LLC
(OneChicago or the Exchange),\4\ a contract market designated with the
Commission pursuant to Sections 5 and 6(a) of the Act, proposed and
requested Commission approval to list for trading ST gold futures
contracts as security futures.\5\ OneChicago is notice-registered with
the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as a national securities
exchange under Section 6(g) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 ('34
Act) for the purpose of listing and trading security futures products.
The approval request was filed pursuant to Section 5c(c)(2) of the Act
and Commission Regulations 40.5 and 41.23.\6\ OneChicago submitted its
request for approval under the 45-day fast-track review period
established by Commission Regulation 40.5. The fast-track review period
for the Exchange's submission was scheduled to expire on December 10,
2007. The review period was extended by the Director of the
[[Page 13868]]
Division of Market Oversight, pursuant to Regulations 40.5(c) and
40.7(a)(1), by another 45 days beyond December 10, 2007 to January 24,
2008 on the grounds that the ST gold futures contracts raised novel and
complex issues that required additional time for review.\7\ By letter
dated January 23, 2008, the Exchange, upon the request of the
Commission's staff, voluntarily extended the review period to March 17,
2008.\8\ On February 26, 2008, the Exchange gave a further voluntary
extension of the review period until April 30, 2008.
\4\ OneChicago is jointly owned by the CME Group, Inc., IB
Exchange Corp., and the Chicago Board Options Exchange.
\5\ In accordance with Section 2(a)(9)(B)(i) of the Act,
Commission staff forwarded the new contract filing to the Securities
and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Department of Treasury and the
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on October 29,
2007. No comments were received in response to this correspondence.
On January 4, 2008, the Exchange filed a rule amendment concerning
minimum price fluctuations to supplement its initial submission.
\6\ 7 U.S.C. 7a-2(c)(2), 17 CFR 40.5, 41.23.
\7\ Commission Regulations 40.5(c) and 40.7(a)(1) allow the
Commission, and certain staff acting pursuant to delegated
authority, to extend the 45-day fast-track review period by an
additional 45 days if the product raises novel or complex issues
requiring additional time for review. 17 CFR 40.5(c), 40.7(a)(1).
\8\ Section 5c(c) of the Act requires the Commission to approve
any designated contract market instrument submitted for approval
within 90 days after the submission of the request unless (1) it
finds that the trading or clearing of the instrument would violate
the Act (or the Commission's regulations), or (2) the person
submitting the request for approval agrees to extend the period of
review beyond the 90-day time limitation.
II. Description of the Underlying Commodity
ST gold futures contracts would overlie 100 Shares of the
streetTRACKS[reg] Gold Trust (Trust).\9\ The Trust was formed under New
York law pursuant to a trust indenture on November 12, 2004. World Gold
Trust Services, LLC, a wholly owned limited liability company of the
World Gold Council,\10\ is the sponsor of the Trust. In addition, The
Bank of New York is the trustee of the Trust, HSBC Bank USA, N.A. is
the custodian of the Trust, and State Street Global Markets, LLC is the
marketing agent for the Trust.\11\ The Trust presently does not engage
in the business of investing or trading securities or commodity futures
or options contracts. As a result, the Trust is not registered as an
investment company under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and it is
not managed by a commodity pool operator registered under the CEA.
\9\ By its terms, an ST gold futures contract would expire on
the third Friday of each contract month. The contract would not be
subject to speculative position limits prior to the last five days
of trading. During the last five trading days, however, speculative
positions would be limited to 13,500 contracts, net long or short.
Positions in ST gold futures contracts would become reportable to
OneChicago when equal to or above 200 contracts. Positions in ST
gold futures contracts would become reportable to the Commission
when equal to or above 1,000 contracts.
\10\ The World Gold Council (founded in 1987) is a not-for-
profit association registered under the laws of Switzerland. The
Council is funded by gold mining companies and is tasked, in part,
with increasing the demand for gold through marketing initiatives
and lowering regulatory barriers to the widespread ownership of gold
products. About the World Gold Council, available at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leavingFR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.gold.org/discover/about_us/index.html.
\11\ Prospectus for the Trust's offering of Shares (July 24,
2007), available at http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/leaving.cgi?from=leavingFR.html&log=linklog&to=http://www.streettracksgoldshares.com/pdf/streetTRACKS.pdf (provides a detailed description of the Trust and
its operations).
The Trust, from time to time, creates, issues, and redeems Shares
which represent fractional undivided beneficial interests in the assets
of the Trust. The sole assets of the Trust consist of gold bullion and
limited amounts of cash. Accordingly, the value of each Share will
fluctuate with the value of the Trust's holdings,\12\ which in turn is
dependent on the spot price of gold.\13\ That value may be found by
dividing the aggregate value of the gold and cash held by the Trust
less applicable fees and expenses by the quantity of Shares outstanding
at any specific moment in time.\14\ The Trust is not actively managed
and does not engage in any investment activities that are designed to
avoid losses or profit from changes in the price of gold. Rather, the
investment purpose of the Trust is to issue Shares that will track the
spot price of gold and thereby give shareholders the opportunity to
gain exposure to the commodity's price volatility.
\12\ The Net Asset Value (NAV) of the Trust is the aggregate
value of the Trust's assets less its liabilities which include (1)
fees paid to the Sponsor, (2) fees paid to the Trustee, (3) fees
paid to the Custodian, (4) fees paid to the Marketing Agent, and (5)
certain administrative expenses assessed as fees.
\13\ In determining the NAV of the Trust, the Trustee values the
gold held by the Trust on the basis of the price of an ounce of gold
as set by the afternoon session of the London Bullion Market
Association's twice-daily fix of the price of gold. The gold fix is
performed by five members of the association. HSBC Bank USA, NA, the
Custodian of the Trust, is one of five gold fixing members.
\14\ By way of a simplified example, assume that the Trust holds
10,000 ounces of gold, the spot price of gold is $900 per ounce, and
that there are 50,000 Shares outstanding. Assume further that the
Trust has accrued fees and expenses of $50,000. Under this example,
the value of the Trust's holdings of gold would be $8,950,000, and
the value of each Share would be 1/50,000 of $8,950,000, or $179.
The Trust, on an ongoing basis, will only issue Shares to, and only
redeem Shares from, Authorized Participants in baskets of 100,000
Shares (ST Share Baskets). An Authorized Participant must (1) be a
participant in the Depository Trust Company that is a registered
broker-dealer or other securities market participant (such as a bank or
other financial institution) that is not required to register as a
broker-dealer to engage in securities transactions, (2) have entered
into an agreement with the Trust and the Sponsor of the Trust, and (3)
have established an unallocated gold account (paper transfer account)
with the Custodian. Upon the payment of a transaction fee, Authorized
Participants may purchase ST Share Baskets by depositing gold (and cash
if necessary) in an amount equal to the NAV of an ST Share Basket per
purchased basket. Likewise, Authorized Participants may redeem ST Share
Baskets in exchange for an amount of gold (and cash if necessary) that
corresponds to the NAV of an ST Share Basket per redeemed basket. All
transfers of gold are accomplished through paper transfers, as opposed
to physical transfers of gold, and are cleared through the clearing
members of the London Bullion Market Association. Such members utilize
mutually maintained unallocated gold accounts for the settlement of
proprietary over-the-counter trades as well as for the settlement of
client transfers.
Upon purchasing ST Share Baskets, Authorized Participants may
divide the baskets into individual Shares for resale. Trust Shares are
registered as securities under the Securities Act of 1933 ('33 Act) and
listed on the NYSE Arca Exchange under the ticker symbol GLD.\15\ The
continuous Share creation, sale, resale, and redemption process,
coupled with a highly liquid market, creates an arbitrage mechanism
that functions to keep the Shares trading at or near the NAV of the
Trust's gold holdings.\16\ Authorized Participants act as arbitrageurs
by taking advantage of significant premiums or discounts in the trading
price of outstanding Shares relative to the spot price of gold. If
individual exchange-traded Shares trade at a price that is below the
spot market price of gold, Authorized Participants will purchase and
aggregate Shares into ST Share Baskets and redeem the Baskets with the
Trust for an amount of gold with an aggregate value that is greater
than the aggregate trading value of the individual Shares that comprise
the redeemed ST Share Baskets. Similarly, if ST Shares are trading at a
price that is above the spot market price of gold, Authorized
Participants will deposit gold with the Trust in exchange for ST Share
Baskets that can then be divided into individual Shares for resale to
retail investors at a premium.
\15\ NYSE Arca is the electronic equities trading facility of
NYSE Arca Equities, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of NYSE
\16\ See Elisabeth Hehn, Exchange Traded Funds: Structure,
Regulation and Application of a New Fund Class (January 16, 2006).
III. Section 4(c) of the Commodity Exchange Act
Section 4(c)(1) of the CEA empowers the Commission to ``promote
[[Page 13869]]
responsible economic or financial innovation and fair competition'' by
exempting any transaction or class of transactions \17\ from any of the
provisions of the Act upon determining that the exemption would be
consistent with the public interest.\18\ Section 4(c)(2) of the Act
provides that the Commission may grant exemptions only when it
determines that the requirements for which an exemption is being
provided should not be applied to the agreements, contracts or
transactions at issue; that the exemption is consistent with the public
interest and the purposes of the Act; that the agreements, contracts or
transactions will be entered into solely between appropriate persons;
and that the exemption will not have a material adverse effect on the
ability of the Commission or any designated contract market or
derivatives transaction execution facility to discharge its regulatory
or self-regulatory responsibilities under the CEA.\19\ With respect to
the term ``appropriate persons,'' Section 4(c)(3) of the Act enumerates
several categories of appropriate persons and provides in subparagraph
(K) that the term shall include ``[s]uch other persons that the
Commission determines to be appropriate in light of * * * the
applicability of appropriate regulatory protections.''
\17\ Covered transactions are subject to certain exceptions not
relevant to the publication of this proposal.
\18\ Section 4(c)(1) of the CEA, 7 U.S.C. Sec. 6(c)(1), provides
in full that:
In order to promote responsible economic or financial innovation
and fair competition, the Commission by rule, regulation, or order,
after notice and opportunity for hearing, may (on its own initiative
or on application of any person, including any board of trade
designated or registered as a contract market or derivatives
transaction execution facility for transactions for future delivery
in any commodity under section 7 of this title) exempt any
agreement, contract, or transaction (or class thereof) that is
otherwise subject to subsection (a) of this section (including any
person or class of persons offering, entering into, rendering advice
or rendering other services with respect to, the agreement,
contract, or transaction), either unconditionally or on stated terms
or conditions or for stated periods and either retroactively or
prospectively, or both, from any of the requirements of subsection
(a) of this section, or from any other provision of this chapter
(except subparagraphs (c)(ii) and (D) of section 2(a)(1) of this
title, except that the Commission and the Securities and Exchange
Commission may by rule, regulation, or order jointly exclude any
agreement, contract, or transaction from section 2(a)(1)(D) of this
title), if the Commission determines that the exemption would be
consistent with the public interest.
\19\ Section 4(c)(2) of the CEA, 7 U.S.C. Sec. 6(c)(2),
provides in full that:
The Commission shall not grant any exemption under paragraph (1)
from any of the requirements of subsection (a) of this section
unless the Commission determines that--
(A) The requirement should not be applied to the agreement,
contract, or transaction for which the exemption is sought and that
the exemption would be consistent with the public interest and the
purposes of this Act; and
(B) The agreement, contract, or transaction--
(i) Will be entered into solely between appropriate persons; and
(ii) Will not have a material adverse effect on the ability of
the Commission or any contract market or derivatives transaction
execution facility to discharge its regulatory or self-regulatory
duties under this Act.
In order for the Commission to approve the Exchange's request to
list for trading ST gold futures contracts as security futures, it
would have to find that the interest that would underlie an ST gold
futures contract is a security. However, if the contracts are
considered to be futures contracts based on a commodity that is not a
security, then they would be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of
the CFTC under CEA Section Sec. 2(a)(1)(A), and listing the contract
for trading as a security future as the Exchange proposes would violate
the CEA.\20\
\20\ 7 U.S.C. Sec. 2(a)(1)(A). Security futures are subject to
joint regulation by the CFTC and the SEC under Section 2(a)(1)(D) of
the CEA, 7 U.S.C. Sec. 2(a)(1)(D).
ST gold futures contracts would be based on an innovative and
highly successful product that efficiently and transparently creates
exposure to the spot price of gold by combining attributes of exchange
traded financial products, cash commodity ownership interests, and
speculative participation in the price volatility of a commodity. The
jurisdictional classification of the underlying instrument, whether as
a security or a commodity that is not a security, is not
In enacting Section 4(c) of the Act, Congress noted that the goal
of the provision ``is to give the Commission a means of providing
certainty and stability to existing and emerging markets so that
financial innovation and market development can proceed in an effective
and competitive manner.'' \21\ Accordingly, the Commission proposes to
use its authority under Section 4(c) of the Act to exempt transactions
in ST gold futures contracts that would be listed for trading on
OneChicago from those provisions of the Act and the Commission's
regulations thereunder that, if the underlying were considered to be a
commodity that is not a security, would be inconsistent with the
trading and clearing of ST gold futures contracts as security
futures.\22\ The proposed exemption would require that transactions in
ST gold futures contracts comply with the requirements established for
transactions in security futures by the Act and the Commission's
regulations thereunder.\23\
\21\ H.R. Conf. Rep. No. 102-978, 1992 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3179, at
3213 (H.R. Conf. Rep.).
\22\ The Commission recently issued a similar order with respect
to exchange traded credit default products. See Order Exempting the
Trading and Clearing of Certain Credit Default Products Pursuant to
the Exemptive Authority in Section 4(c) of the Commodity Exchange
Act, 72 FR 32079 (June 11, 2007).
\23\ Transactions in ST gold futures contracts would be subject
to the provisions of the securities laws, including any applicable
provision of the '33 and '34 Acts.
In proposing to exercise its exemptive authority under Section 4(c)
of the Act, the Commission is not required to, and does not, find
either that an ST gold futures contract is based on a security, or that
it is not based on a security and is thereby subject to exclusive
regulation under the CEA. In this regard, the House-Senate Conference
Committee in the legislative process leading to the enactment of CEA
Section 4(c) noted that:
[T]his provision provides flexibility for the Commission to
provide legal certainty to novel instruments where the determination
as to jurisdiction is not straightforward. Rather than making a
finding as to whether a product is or is not a futures contract, the
Commission in appropriate cases may proceed directly to issuing an
\24\ H.R. Conf. Rep. at 3214-3215.
Futures contracts based on the underlying Shares of the Trust are
``novel instruments'' and, as noted above, the ``determination as to
[their] jurisdiction is not straightforward.'' Given the potential
usefulness of ST gold futures contracts to the significant market for
the Shares that would underlie such contracts, as well as all gold-
linked markets, the Commission believes that this may be an appropriate
case for issuing an exemption without making a finding as to the
precise nature of the underlying Shares of the Trust.
Exempting transactions in ST gold futures contracts from the
provisions of the Act, and the Commission's regulations thereunder,
that are inconsistent with the trading and clearing of security
futures, and thereby permitting the trading of ST gold futures
contracts as security futures on OneChicago, may foster both financial
innovation by expeditiously bringing an innovative derivatives product
to market, and competition by not potentially excluding other similarly
innovative products from trading on regulated futures markets. In
addition, ST gold futures contracts, if traded as security futures
pursuant to an exemption, would be subject to regulation by both the
SEC and the Commission. The implementation of an exemption, under these
circumstances, would not erode customer protections
[[Page 13870]]
or impair the ability of the Commission or OneChicago to discharge any
regulatory or self-regulatory duty under the Act.
IV. Request for Comment
The purposes of the CEA include ``promot[ing] responsible
innovation and fair competition among boards of trade, other markets
and market participants.'' \25\ Based on the foregoing, it may be
consistent with these and the other purposes of the CEA, and with the
public interest, for ST gold futures contracts to trade on OneChicago
as security futures. The Commission urges interested persons to provide
comments that will assist the Commission in conducting its analysis of
the issues relevant to this proposal. This release is not intended in
any way to alter the current status of any transaction that is subject
to one or more provisions of the '33 or '34 Acts or the CEA, including
any regulations adopted thereunder.
\25\ CEA section 3(b), 7 U.S.C. 5(b). See also CEA section
4(c)(1), 7 U.S.C. 6(c)(1) (purpose of exemption is ``to promote
responsible economic or financial innovation and fair
V. Related Matters
A. Paperwork Reduction Act
The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA) \26\ imposes certain
requirements on federal agencies (including the Commission) in
connection with their conducting or sponsoring any collection of
information as defined by the PRA. The proposed exemptive order would
not, if issued, require a new collection of information from any entity
that would be subject to the proposed order.
\26\ 44 U.S.C. 3507(d).
B. Cost-Benefit Analysis
Section 15(a) of the CEA, as amended by Section 119 of the
Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000,\27\ requires the
Commission to consider the costs and benefits of its action before
issuing an order under the CEA. Section 15(a) of the Act further
specifies that costs and benefits shall be evaluated in light of the
following five broad areas of market and public concern: Protection of
market participants and the public; efficiency, competitiveness, and
financial integrity of futures markets; price discovery; sound risk
management practices; and other public interest considerations. By its
terms, Section 15(a) does not require the Commission to quantify the
costs and benefits of an order or to determine whether the benefits of
the order outweigh its costs. Rather, Section 15(a) simply requires the
Commission to ``consider the costs and benefits'' of its action.
Accordingly, the Commission could in its discretion give greater weight
to any one of the five enumerated areas and could in its discretion
determine that, notwithstanding its costs, a particular order was
necessary or appropriate to protect the public interest or to
effectuate any of the provisions or to accomplish any of the purposes
of the CEA. The Commission specifically invites public comment on its
analysis of the costs and benefits associated with the proposed
issuance of an exemptive order under Section 4(c) of the Act.
\27\ 7 U.S.C. 19(a).
The primary cost that could be associated with the proposed
exemptive order is the burden that may arise from subjecting
transactions in ST gold futures contracts, and thereby the market
participants transacting in such contracts, to the dual regulation of
security futures by the Commission and the SEC. Potential costs arising
from dual regulation, however, are outweighed by the legal certainty
and additional benefits that could arise from the issuance of the
proposed exemptive order. For example, permitting the trading of ST
gold futures contracts on OneChicago, through the issuance of the
proposed exemptive order, could facilitate price discovery for gold and
gold-linked interests given that a liquid market in ST gold futures
contracts would serve as an additional source for discerning the
appropriate market value of gold. As discussed previously, the issuance
of the proposed exemptive order may also foster competition by bringing
a new derivatives product to market expeditiously without negatively
impacting potential innovations in other markets for other commodities.
In addition, the issuance of the proposed exemptive order would not
result in any costs in terms of reduced protections for Commission-
regulated markets or market participants. Transactions in ST gold
futures contracts, pursuant to the proposed exemption, would be
executed on OneChicago as security futures and would be subject to
extensive and detailed regulation by the SEC and the Commission.
Consequently, only intermediaries registered or notice-registered with
the Commission and the SEC would be able to solicit, accept orders for,
or deal in any transactions in connection with ST gold futures
contracts. The implementation of an exemption, under these
circumstances, would not negatively impact any applicable regulatory
measure designed to protect market participants or the public interest.
With respect to financial integrity, The Options Clearing Corporation,
as both a derivatives clearing organization registered as such with the
Commission and a clearing agency registered as such with the SEC, would
carry out the clearing and settlement of OneChicago's ST gold futures
contracts, including directing appropriate arrangements for the payment
and physical delivery of the Shares that would underlie the ST gold
futures contracts.
After considering the factors presented in this release, the
Commission has determined to seek comment on the proposed order as
discussed above.
Issued in Washington, DC, on March 10, 2008 by the Commission.
David A. Stawick,
Secretary of the Commission.
[FR Doc. E8-5203 Filed 3-13-08; 8:45 am]
Last Updated: March 14, 2008


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- Details
- Category: Merchandising & Promotion News Merchandising & Promotion News
- Published: 28 December 2016 28 December 2016
- Views: 163359 163359
If you are an automotive business that services a local community, showing up on page one on Google is critical since more than 90% of consumer that perform a search on Google WILL NOT go to page two to find your business. One way your business can improve its chances of appearing on page one is in the Google 3-pack, or whatever it is called this week. There are a handful of factors that Google uses to decide what sites to show when a person searches for a local business.
Your Google My Business Page
While there is a lot of noise about your Google My Business page, linked to Google+, going away, for now it's still a critical piece of the local SEO puzzle that feeds Google Maps and where online reviews on your Google My Business page continue to be a local SEO ranking factor. Another reason why your Google My Business page is so important is the presence of Google Maps data in mobile searches! eMarketing Sherpas has some clients in the auto body shop industry that receive more than 30 calls per month from the mobile version of their Google My Business page! So, if you want your business to be found when people search for companies like yours on Google, you MUST Claim and Optimize Your Google My Business page first.
Locate and Claim Your Google My Business Page
Based on our experience we find that there's a good chance you don't even know you have a Google My Business page and you don't remember setting it up. So the first thing you should do is here to check and see if your page exists: https://support.google.com/business/answer/2911778?hl=en. Another potential issue you might find is that you may have inadvertently set up multiple Google My Business pages and have a bit of a mess to unwind - Here's a tool to check if you have multiple pages: http://www.michaelcottam.com/google-business-page-finder/. If you find that you have duplicate listings, you may be able to merge them by following these instructions: https://support.google.com/business/answer/4669139?hl=en. Finally we've found that the best way to contact and communicate with the Google My Business team is via Twitter. You can send your questions and requests here: https://twitter.com/GoogleSmallBiz.
Optimizing Your Google My Business Page - The Basics
Now that you have found and claimed your Google My Business page it's time to optimize it! Your optimized Google My Business Page should include the following:
• Your Company's Name, Address, and Phone EXACTLY the same as it appears on your website.
• The correct categories - i.e., Auto Body Shop, Auto Repair Shop, Etc.
• A keyword rich description.
• Your company website URL included in the profile.
• A few relevant images.
Google offers some pretty good tips for setting your Google My Business page up the way they suggest here: https://www.google.com/business/resources/.
Advanced Google My Business Optimization
Here are some other ways you can optimize your Google My Business Page;
• Update your images with fresh, hi-resolution images. Google will compress them as needed, but they will look much better. You should feature a hi-res logo, exterior shots, interior shots, staff and behind the scenes work.
• Consider adding a Google Street View Tour of your business. Google is using this as it adds an incredible verification and trust element for them.
If you have questions about your Google My Business Page or need some help cleaning up your company's local search presence give eMarketing Sherpas a call at 888.377.2661 or send them an email at firstname.lastname@example.com and they will insure your business is properly and professionally presented on more than 50 local search sites, including your Google My Business, YELP, Bing and more than 50 others for less than $40.00 per month! Although it isn't very complicated to rank locally, it does take time and requires some knowledge of keywords and content writing. And as they say, time is money.
eMarketing Sherpas created the Local SEO Sherpa Service as a complete and ongoing "we do it for you" service so you can be assured the more technical local ranking factors are taken care of. Either way, if you keep chugging along with these tips, when someone says "Google that" they'll find your business. For more information contact eMarketing Sherpas at 858.5447.8697 and visit www.emarketingsherpas.com.


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Part 15.5: Further wiring progress. The electric work is coming along nicely - should be done this weekend! - and Oh Bee Juan has a lot of the non-electric wiring done (cable, ethernet, phone, etc).
Part 16: The carpet has been chosen and ordered! We got our final price quote and picked a color - it's the same carpet we have upstairs, but in the color "Pebble." The tentative installation date is December 10th. If everything goes according to plan (ha), we'll be done that week!
Part 17: The cabinets for the bar have been chosen and ordered! Again, the same stuff as upstairs but in a different color. Same style and cabinet as our kitchen, but in "sable." Check 'em out here.
The Basement (Parts 16 & 17 of 184)
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
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Free T-Shirts! +Cool Glowing Sticker!
Hardware Reviews
NVIDIA Titan X
The most advanced GPU from NVIDIA called TITAN X with 11 TFLOPs thanks to 3584 CUDA cores running at 1.5 GHz accompanied by 12 GB GDDR5X!
With the new NVIDIA PASCAL architecture which is three times faster than previous generation cards it is now possible to achieve true cinematic image quality in real time without sacrificing smoothness in ultra resolutions and multiple monitor setups.
Intel® Core™ i7-5960X
It's finally here, 8-core / 16-thread CPU from Intel with massive 20 MB Cache, previously available only in XEON server family.
Utilizing the latest Haswell Core Architecture and the new 22nm production process we've seen in Ivy Bridge processors this new extreme series will surely be extremely fast without any doubt, something we're looking forward to test.
Dominator® Platinum SE DDR4
It comes in 2x16GB modules clocked at 3200MHz available in three distinctive finishes, we liked the black finish visible on the pictures.
Very good for serious overclocking if you'll ever need more power in the future with it's patented DHX cooling technology and high quality materials.


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Excellence began as an idea – that the time had come to reform mental health care.
Today, we help all who are involved with mental health care by identifying the most promising initiatives and supporting change wherever it leads to excellence.
As an international community foundation, we connect visionary donors with independent researchers and innovative, recovery-focused program developers. With donor-advised funds, Excellence gives serious philanthropists a place to bring new ideas to life and to invest with confidence in a new vision of excellence in mental healthcare.
Together, we are working toward a day when
- excellence in mental health care is the rule rather than the exception.
- recovery is a mainstream expectation and often-achieved goal.
- care is many-faceted, and medication is always at optimal levels.
Together, we support and educate
individuals and families about mental health, trauma and psychiatric diagnoses such as schizophrenia, depression, bipolar, anxiety, ADHD, addiction and others. We strengthen effective psychiatric rehabilitation approaches like Intentional Peer Support (IPS). We connect the top researchers, practitioners and thinkers in psychiatry and psychology, giving them a forum and an audience.


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I live near the ruins of an old flour mill . It was built in 1804 . The millers that ran the mill lived there and farmed the nearby area and raised there own animals as well. It was a very secluded area so it was prey to bushrangers and the natives that inhabited the area at that time . One of the millers was murdered by bushrangers and was thrown into the pigs by the time that the police arrived the body had been half eaten by the pigs . Another of the millers was said to have been speared by the natives . The story goes that in the middle of october the spirit of one of the millers appears in a white mist over the river.
The Old Mill
Started by lone , Jul 27 2003 05:26 AM
1 reply to this topic
Posted 27 July 2003 - 05:26 AM
Posted 27 July 2003 - 05:53 AM
There's an old mill a few hours away from where I live that is supposedly haunted too...can't remember the whole story but I think it was a caretaker who died since it is now part of a park.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results." Albert Einstein
I've been hit by mrsspookypants
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Minimal plants tattoo is inked on inner arm
Plants Tattoo Idea is one of the many tattoo designs that we publish daily. This website is an online tattoo ideas database which consists of only high quality pictures collected from all over the internet. Enjoy selected tattoo images every day - bookmar
This tatoo design is stored in the Arm Tattoos, Flower Tattoos categories.


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Maple and Vine coming to City Theatre's main stage
September 25, 2012
City Theatre launches into its 2012-2013 season with Maple and Vine, a provocative '50s fantasy by Jordan Harrison.
Directed by Kip Fagan, Maple and Vine runs on City Theatre's Mainstage from October 13 to November 4.
Burned out by their hectic lifestyles, a Manhattan couple moves to Maple and Vine, a corner of the world where the milkman still makes daily deliveries and the housewives' smiles are as sweet as their homemade apple pies.
This is 1955—perpetually. Reenacting the era with startling authenticity, the community gives up their smartphones for switchboards. But when their civil liberties are in question, what will they sacrifice for happiness?
"We are thrilled to open City Theatre's 38th season just before the Presidential election with Maple and Vine, a new play about a community that reenacts 1955 indefinitely," says Tracy Brigden, City Theatre's artistic director. "The play is a striking portrait of American life, then and now, and the juxtaposition of the two worlds has profound and ironic resonance on our current national debate in this election year.
"In an age when we eagerly watch the latest Mad Men episode with equal parts envy and scorn, this play poses the intriguing question: Would you give up your fast-paced, twenty-first century life for the chance at happiness in a kinder, 'simpler' time?"
Maple and Vine
marks New York director Kip Fagan's City Theatre debut. Mr. Fagan has developed new plays with Manhattan Theatre Club, The Public, New York Theatre Workshop, Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard Theatre, New Dramatists, Ars Nova, The Lark, and a variety of regional theatres. He has taught and/or directed at SUNY Purchase, The Juilliard School, and NYU. Most recently, he directed Annie Baker's Circle Mirror Transformation (Marin Theatre Company co-produced with Encore Theatre) in the Bay Area.
In addition, Maple and Vine features Robin Abramson, Ross Beschler, Caralyn Kozlowski, Nelson Lee, and Greg McFadden.
City Theatre will feature ticket and drink specials for audiences who dress to impress—1950s style on Thursday, Oct. 18 at 8 p.m.
Tickets are available at the box office, 1300 Bingham Street, by calling 412.431.CITY (2489) or at http://www.citytheatrecompany.org.


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Peanut Butter Apple English Muffins
If you like quick, you'll love this.
4 Thomas'® Honey Wheat English Muffins, split and toasted
3/4 cup peanut butter
1 medium apple, cored and thinly sliced
Dark corn syrup
Spread peanut butter on each muffin half. Top with apple slices; brush with corn syrup. Broil 6 inches from heat 2 to 3 minutes or until bubbly.


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It may take years, but some researcher will travel to Pakistan's tribal areas and produce a definitive study on what it's been like to live amidst an aerial bombardment from American pilotless aircraft. When that account inevitably comes out, it's likely to find that 2010 – and especially the final quarter of 2010 – marked a turning point in how civilians coped with a drone war that turned relentless.
Even as the Obama administration's assessment of its war strategy nodded to the primacy of the CIA's drone campaign, Predators underscored the point. Over the past two days, four Predators or Reapers fired their missiles at suspected militants in North Waziristan, with three of the strikes coming early today.
They represent a geographic expansion of the drone war. Today's strikes come in Khyber, an area abutting Afghanistan's Nangahar province, that's been notably drone-free. It has become an area for militants fleeing military action in South Waziristan to take succor.
They also bring the drone-strike tally for this year up to 113, more than twice last year's 53 strikes. But those figures don't begin to tell the whole story.
According to a tally kept by the Long War Journal, 58 of those strikes have come since September: There has been a drone attack every 1.8 days since Labor Day. LWJ's Bill Roggio says the pace of attacks between September and November (there was a brief December respite, now erased) is "unprecedented since the U.S. began the air campaign in Pakistan in 2004." (By contrast, in 2008, there were just 34 strikes.)
Both Roggio and the New America Foundation have found that the overwhelming majority of this year's strikes have clustered in North Waziristan: at least 99, by Roggio's count.
That torrid pace of attacks should make it beyond debate that the drones are the long pole in the U.S.'s counterterrorism tent, even if the drone program is technically a secret. The Pakistanis haven't sent their Army into North Waziristan to harass al-Qaeda's haven in the mountainous, Connecticut-sized region, waving off U.S. pressure to invade.
Without a ground force to rely on, the CIA argues, the only option for fulfilling the administration's goal of crushing al-Qaeda is a missile strapped to a surveillance aircraft. During the presidential campaign, Obama said he would pursue al-Qaeda in Pakistan unilaterally if he deemed the Pakistanis intransigent. No one expected he meant he'd do so from the skies.
Of course, the Pakistanis have been the silent partner in the strikes, allowing the drones to fly from their territory, so it's not as if these are unilateral attacks.
But no one knows whether a backlash is just around the corner. While most Pakistanis remain ignorant of the strikes, those in the tribal areas live literally in their shadow, and register enormous discontent, approving of retaliatory attacks on U.S. forces.
Reportedly, the CIA's top officer in Islamabad has fled Pakistan after a man from North Waziristan whose son and brother were killed in a strike filed a lawsuit against the agency.
There's no official or universally accepted figure of how many civilians have died as a result of the strikes, but New America pegs it at around 25 percent of all fatalities. Long War Journal's registry is more generous, claiming that 1,671 militants and 108 civilians have died in the strikes since 2006.
Then there's the question of whether the strikes are legal. Obama administration claims that the September 2001 congressionalAuthorization to Use Military Force in retaliation for 9/11 provides all the legal protection necessary for the strikes. Some lawyers and law professors, by contrast, think that the drones' remote pilots could eventually get hauled before a war-crimes tribunal.
A United Nations report urged Obama to rein in the drones, restricting them to attacks on the seniormost militants. He did the opposite.
Don't expect him to heed that warning in 2011 either. After reading the administration's war-progress report, The New York Times' David Sanger noted that background discussions with administration officials made it clear that next year "the pace will be picked up." The technology certainly enables it: The Predator is giving way to the Reaper drone, which carries a bigger payload; while weapons manufacturers are lightening the weights of air-launched precision missiles.
Independent accounts of what it's like to live under the shadows of the drones are still all-too-rare, especially in English. Given the amount of investment the Obama administration has in the drones, it's unlikely that the administration would listen.
However targeted the strikes may be, the hundreds of thousands of civilians in North Waziristan and the rest of the tribal areas live with the anxiety of the missiles overhead. How long can the U.S. avoid a reckoning?
Update, 10:43 a.m.: CIA spokesman George Little e-mails reporters about the station chief's departure: "Our station chiefs routinely encounter major risk as they work to keep America safe, and they've been targeted by terrorists in the past. They are courageous in the face of danger, and their security is obviously a top priority for the CIA, especially when there's an imminent threat." So there was a threat to the guy besides the lawsuit?
And Salon's eagle-eyed Justin Elliott reminds me that CIVIC (Campaign of Innocent Victims in Conflict) recently compiled an extensive report into civilians in Pakistani tribal areas caught between the drones, the Pakistani army and extremist groups. A sample: "Civilian victims expressed anger at warring parties for their losses.
Despite some people's fear of retribution for speaking out, many placed the blame squarely on the Pakistani and U.S. military. Almost all victims insisted that the Pakistani or U.S. governments, respectively, had a responsibility to make amends – meaning, an acknowledgment of the harm suffered and an offer of assistance or compensation."
*Photo: U.S. Air Force
See Also:


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Big Minecraft fan? If you wish you could build in real life any of the things you've assembled in the game, but are sad that you can't, you can always buy little things like the above Minecraft Light-Up Redstone Ore to cheer yourself up. It's a simple touch-based night light that has three settings, low, medium and high. Internal LEDs will provide the photons, while 2 AA batteries the power. It's made by ThinkGeek and at $25, is a simple gift for any Minecraft aficionado out there.
[ Product Page ]


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Decision : CONF 204 X.C.1
The Koch'ang, Hwasun, and Kanghwa Dolmen Sites (Republic of Korea)
Property: The Koch'ang, Hwasun, and Kanghwa Dolmen Sites
Id. N°: 977
State Party: Republic of Korea
Criteria: C (iii)
The Committee decided to inscribe this property on the World Heritage List on the basis of criterion (iii):
Criterion (iii): The global prehistoric technological and social phenomenon that resulted in the appearance in the 2nd and 3rd millennia BCE of funerary and ritual monuments constructed of large stones (the "Megalithic Culture") is nowhere more vividly illustrated than in the dolmen cemeteries of Koch'ang, Hwasun, and Kangwha.
Supporting the nomination, the Delegate of Australia commended the impeccable state of the site and hoped that when the time is ripe, dolmen sites north of the 38° parallel would be added.


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Fixings: Quality Fixings, Wall Plugs, Screws, Bolts & Washers
You have selected Fixings.
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Ultragrime are the biggest and best wipes you can buy. Use these dirt eating wipes all day, every day on your hands, tools and many other surfaces, including fabric and upholstery


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Today and tomorrow I am at the Institutional Web Managers Workshop taking place a the University of Reading. I'll be liveblogging so usual caveats apply re: spelling, names etc. I welcome any comments and corrections and will do a tidy up post event.
IWMW is being introduced by Sean ? of University of Reading. Employment in ICT is 300% above average around Reading so you've very much picked the right place for your conference.
Context of HE, never experienced such changing times as currently in, now have market place or sort of market place with student choice at heart of the system. What does that mean for you and for university? We have to get better at digital marketing – the web and social media is central to that, reputation is vital, and the way that courses will be delivered will change. That in many ways is your challenge. We live in very challenging times and that is your opportunity. How will
Introduction by Brian Kelly
Brian introduced himself and opened by saying the event had run for 15 years. This year there are several sponsored places and much amplification of the day for those not able to be here in person, and those that want to come back and review videos etc. later on.
Last year we discussed concerns and indeed "the axeman cometh" – one of our colleagues last year blogged about being made redundant shortly after last year's IWMW.
Technical developments – a quick show of hands shows most attendees have one smartphone, many have two, some of have three, and one has four! (OK, lets be fair that person with four is Ben Butchart, my colleague at EDINA, who is running a parallel session on Augmented Reality and smartphones). This is really an opportunity to experiment. Students will have expectations of smart phone access to courses.
Centralisation – is being discussed this is already happening in Wales.
Demonstrate our value – we do a good job but we need to be able to demonstrate that. And to be ready to respond to competition and privatisation. We need to think politically.
Is this is the end of community? Well perhaps not (see image of Frintr mosaic of Brian's community) we are used to sharing and being part of communities around events, on mailing lists, in our social networks etc. We do not live in a vaccuum (see image from Tony Hirst of Brian's network an where there are clusters) – there may be visualisations of communities that we can see in this way.
Innovation – over the next two days we'll be talking about innovation, having sessions about it. We have the mobile web – there is so much potential in these devices. About half of the audience have switched to mobile devices for consuming information. Today we are trying out Shhmooze to share presence and enable further networking.
Recently UKOLN/CETIS ran a survey looking at approaches to delivering institutional websites to mobiles. Many said they planned to deliver it in the same way as large screen devices. But there was a diversity of approaches from apps to SMS. Is this diversity a strength or should we be more consistent.
Openness – KIS (Key Information Sets) – these are the
Do we need institutional websites anymore? Most Coca Cola visitors go to their Facebook page rather than their website.
Mike is up to summarize the DevCSI event (#iwmw11hack) that preceded IWMW 2011. One way to engage: integrate estates management data. KIS is another way and we can integrate with other systems. Dave Chaps and Ben O'Steen created a heatmap of student housing with costs. Even just converting data – e.g. catering spreadsheets – and turning it into something more useful, like a website, it adds real value.
Brian: I think this sort of work shows the value of local developers in a way that meets local institutional needs.
Tomorrow in the final session I'll be asking more of you to get up and share what you have learned. Please contact Brian or Marieke if you are interested.
We know what you do, so what is it worth? – Ranjit Sidhu, Statistics into Decisions (SiD)
This is a follow up to Ranjit's talk at last year's IWMW event asking "so what do you do?". This is as much about mental
tempted by the dark side:
"what if the data shows us in a bad light?" – the data is out there, someone will do this for you (see the recent headlines about the cost of university websites vs. their effectiveness). A vaccuum can be much more dangerous. We need to get ahead of the curve, have information out there so we're not sitting targets.
"universities have a wider role and simply cannot be measured that easily" – but your role is being scrutinised. We want to value what web teams do so that you have a good way of saying cost | benefit
"I have this data but no one is listening" – this is the one we should be focusing on. It's not about the data, it's about delivery of that information as well.
"with so much information and data at our finger tips why is online analysis seen as being so ineffectual?" – to start off with we need to be aware that "web analytics is crap". And it's not clear to others what the difference it between the various statistics are. Why should someone away from the web team have to look at the same reports and the same figures. We need to get beyond what we can provide and think about how we should be sharing that with others.
The other thing we're talking about is automation – people often say "well we send these reports weekly to them…". That's spam. If that's all your doing just stop, these message will not be read and you are creating a negative feeling about your work. We have all this information coming in, we think we need to automate, but we don't process it properly. Automation can be good but if it's not processed it's garbage.
The Quest for Perfection – there is so much data available we want it to be perfect. Just because you don't have every bit of data doesn't mean that you cannot find valueable in that data. We need to forecast and create models that show the value of what we do.
We have online information but it is only meaningful if combined with offline information. Offline data by it's nature is imperfect too. But we can create new models of how to communicate that data. It's not perfect but it's good and it will get better.
So, to summarize: the language is arcane, information is automated, it is dislocated from the business, and it's badly designed – it's the human factor, design matters. So, here is a dashboard we have created for Strathclyde – make the data fit what you want. This is an international recruitment board, we do a social media board, we have prospective students board. You have to cut that data into useful pieces.
So looking closer – we do top line figures. Total visits, total non EU visits – this connects to pricing policies of universities. We do demographic breakdown of gender, age and interests. And, the crux of the matter, we have pound signs. Try and think about if someone did something offline what would the cost be, how can we show the money we have saves, or use projections of converting accesses to student applications. And ca project income from different countries and an estimation of saved costs in sending out prospectuses. Can also do projections about how improving presences could lead to greater income – helps justify costs of web development.
Going micro and macro. For some universities we are providing information for particular departments and faculties – of real value to those teams. Just making an attractive dashboard to present stats can actually make you money from internal charging.
To know how you compare to others you need to compare your activity to sector statistics. It will give you a sense of where to improve, where your strengths are, where you are particularly different. There are obvious groupings but lots of very different groupings – such as interest in particular international students etc.
Sector stats dashboard now on display – Total visits to a particular website, total uk visits, total internal traffic – most universities see between 41% and 44% of traffic – they are customers but a different type of customer. Prospective visits is generated by looking at traffic to UK universities, and international traffic as a percentage of that. Then you can see the top 10 countries traffic and a board of stats on the average revenue breakdown for the top 4 non-eu countries, calculating potential worth per visit. The one thing universities should not be worried about is traffic. You have huge sites, its the conversion that's the problem. You can take that cost and compare it to the offline cost of recruitment.
From knowing the value of new visitors you can look to create campaigns and find the costs and benefits of that campaign.
The key thing about these statistics is that this is a good way to get a proper voice, to show the real value of what online does. But you think about what a website must deliver and what the commercial equivalent would cost to run – you are undervalued, this stuff is a good way to get a louder voice about what you do. You can start a conversation that can really show the value of what you do.
We did a sort of mindmap for homepage – a lot of people wanted to know how traffic is going through the homepage [this is data you can find through Google Analytics through entrance and exit routes). You can find where people get lost en route. This visual shows stats that indicate that Baidu is bigger than Bing – what does that mean for your website and how you are developing it?
Also International behaviour differences – they stay longer, they look at a lot of content and they are more likely to be first time visitors – what does that mean for what you are doing with the site – do you have the right calls to action in the right places?
So, do you take up the challenge? You need to get the data so you are ready when asked. You need to start somewhere.
Q1) Nicola Osborne, EDINA [me] IS it fair to compare the costs of paper materials with those of online? It has been a long time since the main route for many information sources has been paper. I just think that you would never send out prospectuses to many of these people, even if in the UK so it's perhaps not the right comparison.
A1) Yes, it's fair. You have to justify your costs as a department and you need to map that to costs of offline.
Q1) I agree with the principal but just don't think you have the comparison quite right on this one.
Q2) conversion factor of paper may be significantly different – paper is more effevtice.
A2) Sure, we can develop those models to become more accurate. Right now that data doesn't exist.
Q3) Kevin Meers online: can measurement fall through the gaps if you have multiple departmens responsible for different areas of online
A3) Yes, it can and it's important that you avoid that
Q4) Was interested in what you said about losing students through extra clicks. We have a limited amount of space on the homepage so we can't link to everything
A4) I don't have definitive answer but it's interesting that the top clicks are repeated a stage down the website.
Q5) Matthew Hoskins, University of Leeds – we have focused on UG recruitment, now focusing on PG recruitment and selective recruitment. How do you use top line figures to find quality students, that great research postgrad say? These are really small niche audiences – how can you use these techniques to reflect that.
A5) Until they do something we don't know if they are a good or a bad student. The best way to tailor to small niches you need to tailor to
Q6) Brian: If you want a dashboard for your institution what do you do?
A6) We do make money from the institutional dashboard. The sector stats are £50 each – the cost of providing. We have 10 on those stats at the moment but the more institutions we get on there, the better the stats will be.
Marketing and Other Dirty Words – Amber Thomas, Programme Manager, JISC
- Profiling academic expertise – often they have an online presence, or several – hard to know the one up to date profile though. Some are very media friendly, few universities have a blog roll, and how many of those academics link to their other materials – their slideshare, their publications etc. There is a real opportunity there around academic profiles.
- Supporting REF metrics will be important – focus on your internal function as advisors.
- Enhanced research publications – including data, visualisations etc. This is possible and you can help them make a big splash. Making good PDFs and beyond to good quality engaging research
- Cross linking open content to open course data – it is linked in the VLE but it loses it's link to the teaching content. Why not link from the content to the courses? Make richer links and why not use this as taster content to help filter applications.
- Social Media listening tools – become the centre of expertise in this
- Web analytics and visualisation – graphics are important and engaging. Visualise all sorts of data, even in the HR system perhaps. Develop that skill.
Think about how you can make the most of how the web works – linking, APIs, feeds, web analytics, data visualisation, stories. There are things you learn about what is tweeted, shared, automatically pulled into dashboards etc that you can make work better. Story telling often comes up around open data – to explain how that data is valuable – skills in telling stories are important.
Think about fees, student recruitment, student satisfaction, impact, the REF, internationalisation.
Q1) Chris Gutteridge, Southampton: we've found that open data gets you open web pages, the most valuable bit of it has been webpages from the data that are linked together. That's been the surprise benefit of this
A1) Lorcan Dempsey has been looking at the role of the library and how it is changing and talking about the inside out library – curating internal resources for the public. There is a huge opportunity for this sort of activity.
Q2) Brian: you said that people in all departments come in and want to get statistics and data and get information like the KIS. You seem to be saying there are opportunities for web teams here, how should this be taken forward.
A2) Thinking of an outside example local councils have been having massive restructures and outsourcing. One of the things that they've been doing is social media cafes and surgeries and honing their skills in these spaces. So much depends on your team and where they are based. A general theme there is not about what we provide but about monitoring the use of things outside your control to change.
Quick JISC plug – calls that are out and coming:
- Activity Data Programme
- DevSci Programme – visualisation skills very much in that space
- Call (England and Wales) – opening up course data
- Call imminent from Open Educational Resources – institutional resources and linking to web presences
- Call coming out on technology enhanced organisational support
- Call coming about discovery infrastructure, preservation, research information management, and libraries and mobile technology
With that we broke for lunch (which was yummy!) and are now back for the afternoon sessions:
Using activity data to support your users – Tom Franklin, University of Manchester an Franklin Consulting
What is activity data? Well it's everything in a log file. The long answer is that it's every log in, every search, a rich source of data around usage.
We are well behind the game here. Supermarket loyalty cards are all about tracking activity data and get huge value out of that data. Visa have been using activity data for years, they used it to detect fraud and now all the credit card companies do that. Amazon tracks know what you've brought and they know what others have brought. Google collects and uses our activity data.
But… this data is only useful if you know who the people you are collection data on are.
So in Student recruitment – what are potential students doing on our website? Where do they go? What are their routes? can you tie schools' IP addresses to UCAS applications? [should you?] You can use that information to improve the university website, to support candidates while they are on the site? to improve the usability of the site? Certainly to improve student recruitment.
Student retention is incredibly important, very expensive. How can we use data we are already recording to prove success, to improve retention. Purdue university have been doing some work on this. They have a traffic light system for individual students and analysed those students against behaviour generally associated with doing well. They look for worrying patterns, bad patterns, disastrous patterns. By automatically alerting students about how they are doing and what they could do better they are finding that students are doing better.
Demonstrating value – library impact data project – relationship between library use and results; using a variety of data – turnstile activity, library management system, EZProxy service, student record system. The relationship was demonstrated (not causality). See: http://library.hud.ac.uk/blogs/projecs/lidp/. Shows some significant differences. There are all sorts of other questions you can ask. You can see if there is a pattern of borrowing the books that dictates success – timing of borrowing perhaps. You have similar data in your library too!
At Cambridge they are using SAKAI and identifying behaviours of staff and students that are associated with success (or not). A similar piece of work is going on at Leeds Met. But if you can demonstrate that there is an effect then you can encourage staff and students to use the VLE perhaps. see: http://vledata.blogspot.com/.
Research Impact – is about going beyond Google Analytics. How can we increase use of the institutional repository. Help people find the information that they need. There is a project at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales to try and increase the use of materials in the virtual welsh repositories network. They are using an Amazon like approach to encourage people to access more than one paper. People typically go from Google Search or Google Scholar and nab a paper but then do little else. So they are using a combination of a recommender system – people who accessed x also accessed and also similarity based recommendations (project is AEIOU – Aceross Welsh Repository Network). This data can also help us make easier user journeys through a site.
Resource utilisation – can we make that better, more efficient? What resources are being used? By whom? What are the patterns? Can you support users to make better use of resources? Are the subscriptions optimal?
So, it all sounds great and easy… what could go wrong?
Data protection – when you collect personal data you need permission first. Some of it you are required by law to collect but are people consenting? You also have to say why you are collecting data, they must be able to give consent to the uses and sharing of data. With staff and students that's not so hard to do and you have a duty to support their studies which may be a good enough reason. Sharing data has risks. To connect it up usefully anonomisation may be needed but that can impact on usefulness. There is also a big debate on whether IP address is personal data or not. You can anonomise IP addresses but not perfect. Interesting issues there that you at least need to be aware of.
Licensing – if you are sharing data you need to think about what the license may be, who is to be allowed access to this data. Some of the projects that have anonomised.
One of the things that happened at the beginning of these projects was that searching for this data many found they were not collection and/or not storing that data. How can you improve what you are doing by understanding your users better? There will be some effort in analysing data but determine the costs and the benefits, persuade your boss to fund it. Good luck!
Q1) Ranjit Sidhu, SiD: Looking at Twitter while you were talking there is a lot of focus on privacy here. I wondered if you want to comment on it. I think people get their knickers in a twist for no reason – especially when compared to Amazon etc.
A1) It's not just me it's also the Data Commissioner – we should be doing more with this data. People are getting too uptight about privacy. If you are supporting what people want to do then it shouldn't be a problem.
Q1) Something like an IP address is publicly addressed.
A1) The issue is that we can use the IP as a proxy then we could see lots of people as the same thing – this is one of the challenges with the openurl router as providers see one url/proxy (in a more literal meaning) address. You could see weird unconnected other behaviours.
Q2) Sam Trafford, Edgehill University: did you say something on data on which schools produce good students
A2) No one is doing this yet but it seems like something we could do.
Q2) I think you have huge potential for misuse there – for profiling schools that do not bring in money.
Comment from Amber) From the government open data agenda they are sharing loads of data and lots of ways of modelling it so that it's sensible rather than being about league tables.
Q3) Brian Kelly, UKOLN: Think I agree with the idea of a risk assessment about making data available. In the context of the cookie legislation the government minister said they were looking for a business friendly
Q4) Amber Thomas, JISC: Is there potential to look at people logging in via Facebook, Twitter, Google logins etc?
One of the audience members from Central School of Speech and Drama is going to make their student portal login able by third party services.
Q5) Ben Butchart, EDINA: I understand that with the OpenID logins for sites like Twitter, the site has to declare what information is giving up and what data will be used as I understand it.
Search Engines versus Instititional Impecuniousness – David Hawking, Funnelback
David has been working in the National University of Australia for 40 years in a variety of roles but recently I've had to learn some of Amber's dirty marketing words. I joined Funnelback which was established in 1999 and we hope to have about 8 members of staff soon.
Who are we? David gives us an overview of the rich history of the UK academic community. But academia is under huge pressures to perform. Fee paying foreign students have become a big focus of the university budgets. These students make a major contribution to economies. They aso increasingly look to force cash contributions from students.
HE Institutions are businesses and there are two fundamentals to running a successful business (a) need to maintain and increase revenue and (b) needs to increase staff productivity (without lowering standards). The need to attract better students, more funding, undertake commercialisation and reduce unnecessary time/costs.
Some examples: London Metropolitan University
If I search for a subject I will get a set of search results related to the courses as a sub section of search results. This is trying to deliver those extra conversion.
Another example: Universite Paul Sabatier
I want to show you search with query suggestions. There are ordinary suggestions from the log but also category suggestions for courses and contact detail info. Can also run javascript that looks up course fees, registrations left etc. from these searches.
A comment already made today: universities are just like an ecommerce site. A user comes in, looks around and leaves the site unsatisfied. There's nothing worse than a site that gets lots of data from you but gives you nothing more. You want to improve your conversion rate.
There is an opportunity to adapt results or presentation to a visitor's region based on IP address. Issue: matching careers with courses – people will be searching for courses by job titles.
Those were course finding examples but now I'm going to talk about expertise finding. This project is Australia's Knowledge Gateway combining 8 universities in the country. All Australian institutions need to opt into the HERDC – this is much like the REF. They are collecting and reporting all that data but it can facilitate discovery of strength, attraction of staff, attraction of graduate students, industrial investment, endowments. How do businesses, potential research students etc. find out who they should contact for more etc.
So here is the Autralia's Knwoledge Network. This ranks researchers based on activity around their work.
This tool will be rolled out so that each institutions can use this in their own scoped context.
Image and marketing – websites are vital to marketing a university. Search is vital to web experience. Key differences between universities and corporates. Websites may contain critical information but may not confirm to corporate image. Arguably papers shouldn't be presented only subject to the needs of the corporate image though.
Business Intelligence – what are people searching for on your sites? Are your campaigns working?
Productivity wise – student enquiry handling is always near the top of university search logs: access to course materials, course planning, accomodation, exams, timetable., library etc.
Many universities now make video recordings of lectures – do people want to access lectures by day and time or also by topic or concepts?
Staff efficiency – locating policies and procedures, staff directory, online services, parking permits, leave forms, gathering material for grant proposal, finding collaborators. An issue: new staff and position handocer, search of restricted access material, academic staff are often away from the office.
Tools for the SearchMaster
Tools like autocomplete, alternative suggestions for spelling, synonyms, and query blending. Another common problem is that there may be nothing on our websites – we can help by providing "best bets" of what we think is being sought.
Tune your ranking – established methods for doing this and can make substantial impact. Test sets here that can be used – e.g. accomodation queries, etc. and really increase effectiveness. There are hundreds of websites, millions of pages to track.
A researcher requests "The Emmottiser" which tries to explain for the query what results appear and why. People actually get surprised about lack of traffic even when their page on the library does not include that text at all. This tool helps suggest words to include in your page.
"The accessoriser" the Australian government has required WCAG2 compliane testing and reporting over time can be build into your search. Not all of these things can be reported on automatically.
Search profile – should search look the same for all visitors to the university webpage or should they have differentiated places.
Successful search deployment requires the right ingrediants, the right process, a dash of presentation and tasty presentation.
Q1) Ben Butchart, EDINA: I liked the example of a PhD looking for a researcher or supervisor. I guess a lot of institutions had to sign up to that, was wondering about the politics of that
A1) The Group of 8 are keen to have the credit for setting up that search in the first place. All institutions have to have that data available, all are obliged to make that data available. The Group are also keen to bring in other institutions.
Q2) Dan Watson: how much of this is out of the box, how much of that is customised
A2) Most of that is essentially out of the box… in the coming version (in August).
Q3) With the autocomplete it seems like that was both query selection and answer suggestions
A3) Yes, you need targeted suggestions weighted to the content on the university site. We suggest replacement text if a letter is wrong. We add in results for other areas (e.g. staff info) as possibilities – we've had some ideas about how that one box completion could help. But there is a downside of that – may miss out on log information as you may go right to a page rather than a results section. Maybe the speed of access will improve conversion though.
Q4) Please talk dirty about sales and the like. I carried out a survey of search engine usage in Russell Group Universities. Google is the most common option to go for, a mix of others in use. If people like what they see how can they persuade managers etc. to look into this.
A4) Funnelback's first customer was the National University of Australia but after a while we left the university market alone for a while as Google was there and free. But universities are more interested again in how to tailor search better on their websites. If you look at what you want to achieve from search – business objectives, who the audiences are, high rates of conversion, that's where we can come in.
Next up we have coffee and then Parallel Sessions – I am giving one of these – in the main theatre of all places – so expect an end to blogging until Day Two!
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